


"Impossible" is a dare

by elsandry



Category: Girl Who Owned a City - O. T. Nelson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsandry/pseuds/elsandry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Overpopulation was one thing they had never expected to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Impossible" is a dare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [J (j_writes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/gifts).



Jill found Lisa in her tower room. She had a book about medieval castles and a map of the surrounding countryside open in front of her, both covered with notes in the cryptic code she'd invented some years earlier. If Glenbard should ever fall again, their enemy wouldn't be able to learn much from her plans.

She handed Lisa a can from their dwindling supply of soda. "I have some news for you, Lisa. We're going to have a new arrival."

Lisa finally looked up at her, frowning. "Jill, we've talked about this. We're already over capacity. We can't take in any more children, no matter how badly you feel for them. If we keep bringing in new children, no one will be happy, not the existing residents or the new children. Isn't it better to have our current population happy and healthy than a bigger population that's miserable?"

Jill could tell Lisa was gearing up for one of her speeches, but after all these years Jill had learned how to derail her when needed. "It's not what you think," she said, cutting Lisa off before she could really get going. "I know exactly how bad the crowding is. I'm the one who's been dealing with the illnesses that go around every winter, remember?" The diseases wouldn't spread so fast if they weren't packed in like sardines. This argument was one she had reluctantly, and privately, conceded to Lisa.

"What is it, then?" Lisa asked.

"The oldest Williams girl is going to have a baby."

Lisa gaped at her. It had been a long time since Jill had seen her so completely shocked, and she had to fight back a smile.

"I never planned for this. I never even considered this," Lisa said, mostly to herself. "But the oldest ones who survived the plague are seventeen and eighteen now. How did I not see this coming?"

Jill thought it might have something to do with Lisa's complete lack of interest in romance. For her, the biggest thrill had always been planning the future, and if Lisa had a flaw it was that she never been good at understanding that people could have different priorities.

"You don't have to foresee everything," Jill said quietly. "That's why you have all of us. We can see to the little details while you're focusing on the big picture."

"You saw this coming?" Lisa's voice was much calmer after Jill's reassuring words.

"I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner," Jill said. "I've been handing out condoms for a while." She was proud of herself for not blushing when she said it. The first time she had asked the supply teams going to the Secret Places to bring her condoms, she had been so mortified she could barely get the words out. But a doctor had to be able to discuss these things frankly, and anyway the teenagers who came to her for condoms were more even more embarrassed than she was.

Lisa looked a little embarrassed as well, but she pressed on. "Good work, Jill. Just- keep doing that, and let me know if there are any further problems. We simply don't have the resources for a lot of people to start having children." Lisa was already turning back to her plans, the problem solved in her mind.

"We have further problems, or we will soon. A lot of the condoms are getting close to their expiration date or have already passed. They're going to get less and less effective as they get older and more brittle."

Lisa swore. "We're going to have a population explosion in the next few years," she realized. "As people get older they'll be pairing off, and they won't want to share living areas with their younger siblings once they're starting families of their own." She stood up and walked across the room to the much-altered floor plan of Glenbard. "We can divide some of the larger classrooms into two or three smaller rooms, but we'll get a lot of complaints from the child-families already living there. And we'll need to add diapers and formula and other baby things to the supply runs, but those should still be sitting untouched in the Secret Places."

"Breathe, Lisa. It'll be five or six months before the baby comes, and longer before there are more. For once, we have plenty of time to plan."

Lisa let out a small laugh and sat back down, but her eyes still had that manic gleam Jill had seen so many times when Lisa was planning. "You're right. Tell me what else we'll need to add to the supply runs."

Jill bit her lip. This was the thing she'd been afraid to bring up. "The usual sorts of things, clothes, blankets, toys. But the most important thing we won't find in one of your Secret Places. Babies need vaccinations. I've been doing a lot of reading, and the epidemics before vaccines were horrifying. Unless we want to have an infant mortality rate straight out of the Dark Ages, we need to set up a laboratory and relearn how to make vaccines."

"Do you really think you can do that?" Lisa sounded skeptical.

"It's no sillier than you wanting to get the airplanes flying again." If Jill's tone was a little snappish, it was only because she really did doubt herself. But something seeming impossible had never stopped them before. Lisa probably took impossible as a dare.

"You're right. If we gave up when something seemed difficult, we'd both be starving and hiding from gangs right now." It wasn't really an apology for doubting her, but Jill knew it was the closest she would get from Lisa. "You'll need lab equipment, and all the science and medical textbooks we can find. We can raid a university library - it's past time we did that anyway - and there must have been medical, uh, Secret Places."

"You can say warehouses," Jill said. "I figured that much out ages ago."

Lisa smiled a little. "Even the supply teams call them Secret Places. It's an extra security measure, just in case."

Lisa opened a phone book and began flipping through it. Jill saw notes written in the margins in several people's handwriting and some listings that had been scratched out completely after they'd been emptied of everything useful. Lisa stopped when she found a page of medical supply companies. "We'll start with the ones closest to us, and keep going further until we find what you need."

Jill swallowed hard. It was one thing to talk about making vaccines, but to actually try was intimidating. It felt like the first time she'd performed surgery all over again. "Just bring me the supplies, and I'll be ready."

Lisa put a bookmark in the phone book and set it aside. She pulled the map of the city closer to Jill. "Now, about the overpopulation: when more of us start having children it will speed up a problem that was already here. I've been giving it a lot of thought, even before this, but there's only one solution. We can't build on to Glenbard without weakening our security. It'll be months before I'm ready to put this plan into effect, but I've scouting some potential locations."

Jill saw that she had circled several spots on the map. "Locations for what?"

"Another place like Glenbard. Somewhere secure and easily defended, with room for the new families to grow." Lisa grinned, her eyes bright with excitement. "I need you here at Glenbard, but Todd's been at my side all these years, watching everything I've done. How do you think he would handle a city?"

**Author's Note:**

> As I was rereading the book, it occurred to me that when a generation of children who were mostly too young to have had sex ed hit puberty, they were going to have a baby boom. Glenbard already had a population of 500-ish people a year and a half after the plague, out of a potential 800. A few more years, and they're going to have a real problem with overpopulation. And so this story was born.


End file.
